Technology, Adventure, Urban Living, Smart Finance

What is the genesis of your perfect travel itinerary? What concept kick-starts your plans, taking you to awe-inspiring destinations filled with rich, foreign cultures? Perhaps it’s venturing to the UNESCO sites. Or how about checking off countries and continents? Well, what gets me going is a far-flung hotel with an attractive award redemption rate—a new hotel in a new place means new things to do! That hotel becomes a home base from which a well-structured itinerary can frame an incredible travel experience.

This entry is all about how I have planned my future trip to southern Chile.

Flurries of activity, things get done. Lately lucrative bank bonuses earned in exchange for opening new accounts has become very attractive. Giving away my personal information to big financial institutions. Running their respective gauntlets, adhering to the requirements and rules, and operating within the terms and conditions: Quite an awesome angle on extracting big bucks for simply playing a little game.

This past Saturday morning I had quite a list. Open tabs, scattered notes, partial plans. These things (each a tiny project in itself) had been staring back at me from my desktop for weeks. However Saturday morning I also accomplished a lot.

It took some distilling and arranging but I lined up tasks and knocked them out one after the other. The method I use to force myself to action is to leave tabs open in my browser until I act on whatever the project is that requires the content from that page. Constant exposure to information (the tab) that might help me so finish the project and free up space (in my browser and in my mind) is an excellent form of perpetual prompting. Personally I find this method works quite well. The drip of stress is a strong motivator.

This site was assembled fairly quickly and it is built upon the most cutting edge blogging platform out there. WordPress is so powerful; it facilitates publishing yourself on a global scale. Words and thoughts belonging to you stand independently. They stand right alongside juggernauts like CNN, Reuters, and Yahoo, and are just as accessible. Your ideas on view to all the world. It’s an inspiring sensation. Here’s how I did it and how you can too:

This comes out to around $70 per year. Totally doable! It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than a “full featured” web hosting plan, you receive root access to your own shell, and you get to walk away with valuable skills.

Last night after writing Declutter I separated and stacked a few items and tried to decide which to create a Craigslist listing for first. With the low light of evening less than ideal for positive photography results, it was decided: I would write item descriptions that evening and take pictures the next morning.

A large part of my mental comfort insists on my apartment being orderly. I’ve read or heard it described somewhere that the wide variety of environments we inhabit each day have both positive and negative affects on our moods and mind. It would seem that acute attention should be paid to designing a stimulating and supportive primary living space.

When I walk into a room, especially one that I know well, open spaces and the familiarity of a few cherished mementos placed thoughtfully is a deep and genuine welcome to me. The warm sense that even space and inanimate objects acknowledge my presence and invite me with emptiness is a happy and comfortable feeling indeed.

That title just sounds a lot slicker than “Unusual Retirement Account Funding Techniques.”

Last year in April I wrote Debt Free, my ode to faithfully filling up my Vanguard Traditional IRA to its $5,500 brim. At that time I was about $2,500 short of maxing out my IRA. My solution was to fund my Target REDcard (since discontinued by American Express) by charging the $2.5k to my Capital One VentureOne card, withdrawing the balance from REDcard to my checking account, and finally transferring the funds to my IRA account.

Once an idea finds coupling with an interest, it is at that time new and meaningful things begin to happen. My passion for travel planning is now a full-blown hobby. Simply pulling up Google Maps provides an endless source of destinations, each of which of course has a name, but perhaps also an interesting story. Placing myself into that story is one of the most culturally respectful rites and socially entertaining sensations I can experience. Full immersion. I am now living in another world, others’ world.